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My Left Kidney

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Re: My Left Kidney

#31

Post by ajkjk »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #27

This does honestly kind of shock me, it’s respectable that he did something like this for a random person but I could never imagine myself doing it for anyone except close family. I used to think EA was some kooky AI safety Cult but if so many EA folks donate their kidney, my opinion of them has improved far more. They at least have balls!

Well... maybe they're both. Plus a kooky crypto-embezzlement cult. Probably depends on who you get. My skepticism to the EA movement is of the form: I can respect the underlying idea but I have very little faith in many of the actual people to do it.

Also, EA sorta bakes in utilitarianism as a premise and (from my experiences in the ACX comment section) basically finds any non-utilitarian argument to be literally unintelligible, which doesn't work for me because I think there are more important things in life than optimizing numbers (... but since they evaluate the worth of things by number-optimization they seem to be unable understand this perspective at all).

Re: My Left Kidney

#32

Post by DirkH »

monero-xmr wrote: post #4

[flagged]

This is about as bad and ethically compromised a take as someone who hates crypto-bros and would immediately cease all contact with anyone they identify as pro-cryptocurrency (say believe it superior to the current financial system) and blackball them from all business interests. Justifying doing so to protect their wealth because they know for a fact that all those damn crypto-bros are utter pieces of shit.

I have a good friend who is a communist I strongly disagree with. I believe quite-bad things about communism as a philosophy and what it inevitably leads to. As of yet I have not excluded all people who are communists from my life or business interests due to believing their philosophy makes all or them bad people. I can say the same about Christians or Jehovah's Witnesses or Randian libertarians or Kantians.

I strongly disagree with all their ethical worldviews and metaphysics, but I don't automatically believe people are evil in those categories nor believe they would stab me in the back if they could, even it I believe the philosophies in question can lead to more backstabbing behavior.

It's simply discrimination and would morally compromise me to hate any group of people for what they believe. It wouldn't surprise me if also very illegal, especially if you decline to hire someone who identifies as EA.

Re: My Left Kidney

#33

Post by rednerrus »

Hopefully the Ozempic breakthroughs will alleviate some of the need for kidney donation as it lowers the occurrences of End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD).

Re: My Left Kidney

#34

Post by [deleted] »

elromulous wrote: post #26

Can anyone (with a better understanding of radiation risks) confirm the math for the added mortality risk from a single CT? I know a CT is a lot of radiation, but the mortality risk seems very high.

[deleted]

Re: My Left Kidney

#35

Post by monero-xmr »

eutropia wrote: post #30
monero-xmr wrote: post #4

[flagged]

HN isn't really the place for this kind of vitriolic diatribe, because it's not all that conducive to thoughtful commentary. That Aside, > As if you can reduce "societal benefit" to some quantifiable number I assume your business doesn't mark any Goodwill value or other non-tangibles in its GAAP-compliant financial statements then?

The linked article was explicitly stating a philosophical argument in favor of effective altruism as a good philosophy to live by. I see this equivalent to eugenics - the ends justify the means, afterall.

If we are going to live in a society where some people pretend they can calculate the benefit of all their actions, then I am free to say how absolutely fucked that entire process is, and point out the real world damage that is has explicitly caused.

If someone was openly a National Socialist, we wouldn't have any problem pointing out the problems the Nazis caused. But with EAs who recently lit tens of billions of dollars on fire to buy penthouses on Caribbean islands and castles in rural England, we have to give them a pass? Excuse me if I'm not open to listening to their thoughtful commentary.

Re: My Left Kidney

#37

Post by FeepingCreature »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #15
sooheon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ends do justify the means. It's just that the means are also ends.

Also, there's the Achilles' heel of utilitarianism in general to deal with: "Even the very wise cannot see all ends." A cynic might say "Even the very wise cannot see any ends."

Then the cynic jumped out of a window.

(Clearly, there is some ability to see ends.)

Re: My Left Kidney

#38

Post by unholiness »

lispisok wrote: post #25
BobaFloutist wrote: post #8

I respect the British organizers’ willingness to sacrifice their reputation on the altar of doing what was actually good instead of just good-looking. Surely their reputation is a factor in their ability to do good? Optics sometimes necessitate sacrificing the "mathematically superior choice" for one that's worse in the name of not pissing off a ton of people the support of whom you rely upon.

This stuck out to me too. If Effective Altruism is about using math to figure out how to do the most good they seemed to have ignored higher order effects of their actions. What if buying the castle hurt Effective Altruism's reputation so less people got into EA so less people donated money to buy mosquito nets or malarial regions in Africa resulting is less overall good?

It's hard to trust a community who claims to focus on effectiveness but then it turns out puts great effort into looking good. That kind of deception is more damaging than a bit of bad press.

There's plenty of charities with great marketing. EA doesn't need to be another one.

Re: My Left Kidney

#39

Post by casebash »

monero-xmr wrote: post #19
caturopath wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you've interacted with some nasty folks who were EAs - I don't think this was a typical cross-section of EAs. Sorry to hear about your bad experiences

As one example, a friend of mine lost over $20 million to SBF / FTX, which funded said castle. However he did not sell his claim and is optimistic he will get most of it back. Money seems like a number on a page until you see how it affects real people! As another example, I had an EA VC investor nuke one of my seed investments in order to have a different one of his portcos acquire the IP for scrap because he had a…

FTX didn't actually fund the castle, from what I've heard. It was another group.

Re: My Left Kidney

#40

Post by DoreenMichele »

It's a good read. I enjoyed the data analysis and his snarky wit about a few things. I enjoyed him finding out he could apply to another hospital and doing it "out of spite."

I know he wants to encourage you to donate a kidney. I still wish we tried harder to heal the "original equipment from the manufacturer" we are all born with. I have been on the record a long time with this opinion. I get a lot of hatred for it, though I have a condition that frequently results in being a transplant recipient and my only wish here is for better baseline care for people like me instead of razzle-dazzle headlines about flashy "tech" solutions.

Good solutions tend to be boring. I want a boring life where I just get to have good health and not an "exciting" one where I get to tell you how I was dying until some kind stranger died in a motorcycle accident at a shockingly young age and let me have their leftover body parts. (Because people like me need body parts that are a little hard to spare as an act of charity.)

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